A Study On Zeng Hu's Translation Of The Thorn Birds-from The Perspective Of The Adaptation Theory

The Thorn Birds written by the Australian writer Colleen McCullough has won great popularity in America since its publication. It ranks one of the top ten best sellers in America along with The Godfather. It is referred to as Gone with the Wind of Australia and is a best-seller all over the world instantly. The popular Chinese version is translated by the translator Zeng Hu. At present, The Thorn Birds is mainly studied from the literary perspective and translation studies concerning this famed literary works are few. No systematic research has been conducted from the perspective of the adaptation theory.The adaptation theory is proposed by Belgian pragmatist Verschueren, who points out that in verbal communication, the use of language has to take the linguistic and extra-linguistic factors into account and is a process of making choices and adaptations consciously or unconsciously. Translation, as the communication between two different languages and cultures is also a process of making choices and adaptations to ensure the transplant of the language and culture. Within the framework of the adaptation theory, the adaptation is reflected from the following four aspects:adaptation to the contextual correlates, adaptation to the structural correlates, dynamic adaptation and salience of adaptation. Within the framework of this theory, the Chinese translation of The Thorn Birds is mainly studied from the four aspects. As far as the contextual correlates are concerned, the adaptation to the target language readers'physical world, mental world and social world is studied. On the structural correlates, adaptation at the phonological level, lexical level, syntactic level, discourse level and style is studied. On dynamic adaptation, how the translator makes dynamic language choices according to the context is discussed. On the salience of adaptation, the focus is on how the translator makes adaptation based on the translation purpose, the target language readers'meta-pragmatic awareness and the target language readers'response. This thesis is a tentative study of Zeng Hu's Chinese translation of The Thorn Birds in an attempt to explore the feasibility of the adaptation theory in explaining the translation activity.